


This In-Between Place

by stellacanta



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 05:45:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18866935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellacanta/pseuds/stellacanta
Summary: draucorweek day 5 prompts:“Was it worth it?”//Drautos is forced to tell the glaives about Cor and himself after a rumor starts that cor is sleeping with the enemy.When the rumors first started about Cor sleeping with the enemy, Drautos had sighed and told him that he would talk to his men. After all his men had apparently been the ones to start the rumor, so it was only fair that Drautos take responsibility for it.The thing about rumors was that there was always a grain of truth to them, no matter how small. Cor had turned over the rumors to find if there was any substance to them. (He still turned over them now after everything had fallen apart.)





	This In-Between Place

Political prisoners were the responsibility of the crownsguard and not the kingsglaive, which explained the rather unfortunate encounter he was having with one of his subordinates. “You wanted to see the traitor sir,” the crownsguard responsible for the prisoner asked, looking at him askew as if he was also under suspicion. “This is the second time this week isn’t it? Aren’t you getting rather-” The young man, couldn’t have been older than 25 really, squinted his eyes up at him. “chummy with him?”

“Let me through,” he said instead of answering the question. “I have important matters to discuss with the prisoner.” Cor ignored the crownsguard grumbling about how the rumors about how Cor the immortal was sleeping with the enemy, and therefore going soft on him, were true. The rumors had been bad, but bearable, when Drautos wasn’t under suspicion. They had only gotten worse when it turned out Drautos was a traitor to the crown.

He inclined his head in acknowledgement to the crownsguard when the man jotted down his name and finally let him through to the visitation area. The visitation area was separated into two rooms divided by a brick wall. In the center of the wall was a large window made out of thick panes of glass that allowed one to see into the other side. Holes were cut out in the window so conversation could be exchanged while the prisoner and visitor were kept physically separate.

Cor stared dispassionately towards the other room until there was the sound of a door opening and finally Drautos appeared in the other room. “Titus,” he greeted with the barest amount of emotion he could manage.

“Cor,” Drautos responded in kind, inclining his head as he stood in front of the window. “I didn’t think I would see you again so soon.” It was a jibe no doubt aimed at the long periods of time in the beginning that he would stay away from the man after shouting at him for doing something so stupid and harmful. He could still remember the pure rage he felt then, and how that rage only grew when his former lover had stood on the other side without reacting in any way.

Cor shrugged and pulled forward a chair that just so happened to be the only furniture in the room. Drautos hesitated for a moment before he mirrored the action in his room. “I had a few things I wanted to ask you about, if you’d be amenable to answering them.”

Drautos raised an eyebrow at him. “What more do you want to know? I’ve answered the questions asked of me reasonably well I assume.”

(He hadn’t really. Research that had been done in the former captain’s past had yielded more fruitful results than asking him directly for motives and intel.)

“When the rumors spread amongst the glaives that I was sleeping with the enemy-” It was only due to how long they had been seeing each other and how familiar they had grown with the other’s body language that Cor noticed the way Drautos suddenly tensed and how his eyes flickered just slightly away. He pressed his lips into a thin line. “-what was going through your head then?”

“I didn’t want to drag you into this mess,” Drautos said after a long pause. “You know how the glaives can be when it comes to rumor. I wouldn’t have your reputation tarnished because of some mouthy glaive.”

“Except it wasn’t really my reputation at stake here was it?”

Drautos shrugged and leaned back in his seat. “You were associated with me, at some point or another someone would think to call your loyalty into question as well, as faultless as it may be.” Cor watched as the other man knitted his fingers together in his lap. “I wasn’t going to let people start asking questions of you when you did nothing wrong.” It was too late for that, if his interaction with the crownsguard was anything to go by. He wanted to throw it back at Drautos’ face just to see how the other man would react, but decided to hold his tongue, instead. “I figured if I came out about our relationship the way I did, the worst you would face was a bit of light-hearted ribbing from the glaives about our sex life. Oh, I would try to keep it in check of course, because frankly it’s none of their business, but I figured the alternative was worse.”

Cor let Drautos’ words sink in before he asked the question that had been on his mind this entire time. “Was it worth it?” He didn’t specify what he meant by it, from the way Drautos’ gaze sharpened, he could tell that he didn’t need to.

As he had come to expect, Dratuos gave an indirect answer. “I did what I had to do,” the man said after another long pause where their eyes met and never let go. “I didn’t expect it to go well, but neither did I expect things to happen the way they did.”

It wasn’t a yes, and it wasn’t a no. It was an ambiguous answer that seemed to reflect the current ambiguous state of their relationship. Cor nodded once and then stood to leave. Drautos watched him go without saying a word.


End file.
